


Forever Boyfriend

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Decades, Getting Back Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: He’s not a forever boyfriend, Merlin thinks. How can anyone be a forever anything, when forever is so long away? He could be the one, if there’s such thing as “the one.” Or he could break my heart tomorrow.





	1. Forever Boyfriend

 

_ He’s not a forever boyfriend,  _ Merlin thinks.

His head is resting in Arthur’s lap, trying to make out the color of his eyes in the glow of the moon. He knows them, knows their color intimately.  _ Blue, but the blue of slightly melted cotton candy ice cream. Blue, but the blue of a summer fade. Blue, like the sky just before rain. _

Merlin has spent many months studying those eyes. Under the glow of the neon bar signs. In fields where they chased dandelion puffs. In the office lobby under fluorescent lights. Now, as the rain pelts against the tin roof of the cabin they’re sharing.

_ How can anyone be a forever anything, when forever is so long away?  _ The question rattles in his mind, bounces like a pebble across the pond out back. Arthur’s fingers cut through Merlin’s curls, gentle tugs and absent whispers.

He feels the pressure of lips against his temple, can imagine the absent look as Arthur studies the stars, counts them the way his mother taught him, tells himself stories that are totally fake.

_ He could be the one, if there’s such thing as “the one.” Or he could break my heart tomorrow.  _ Tomorrow, when they open the letter that tells them where Merlin’s residency will be. If they’re staying in Manchester or moving to Brighton or if Merlin is flaunting off to the states.

_ It won’t be the end. Nothing really last forever. Not the sun, not the moon, not the dinosaurs.  _ He knows, though, that Arthur draws the line at America. Because he cannot leave his sister, his nephew. Can’t bear to be more than a phone call away from the only family he has left.

Merlin gets it, honestly. Except that he doesn’t, that he has no family left, and no reason to stay. Except that there’s a whole world to explore and people to meet and things to try. Except that Merlin wants more than a tin roof on holidays and four white walls, and a canopy bed and meals and Chen’s.

_ Forever is what you make it. A song last forever, inside of 3 minutes 12 seconds. Forever last years, struggling through medical school. Forever last a breath waiting for an answer, and forever last a lifetime, wishing they were here. _

Arthur shifts above him, beneath him,  _ around him _ , pulls at Merlin’s ears. “What are you thinking, little Mouse?”

Merlin scowls up at him. “”M not a Mouse.”

Arthur just grins, crooked tooth catching the moon light. “Little MOuse, with your too big sweater and your too big sweats and your too big ears. Tell Mr. Kitty what you’re thinking?”

Merlin rolls over, buries his face in the curls that he knows are golden,  _ like wheat in the midday under a clouded sky.  _ He blows a raspberry, blows long and loud until Arthur is laughing, is wiping at the saliva on his belly, is shoving Merlin off the tiny couch.

_ Forever is the seconds it takes to hit the floor when your lover pushes you, the moment between his hands leaving your skin and your back hitting the rough wood floor. _

Arthur picks him up, helps him to his feet. Merlin tries to take a step back, tries to escape, but Arthur keeps his hands, loops Merlin's arms around his neck, holds him close.  _ Forever is his breath, whiskey and cinnamon and lemon, fanning over his face, asking him to explain the universe. _

“What happens tomorrow, Arthur?” He doesn’t mean to ask it. Or he does, but not in this way not in this moment, maybe not ever in the real world either.

Arthur pauses in the weird swaying they’d fallen into. “Tomorrow life happens. We find out where you’re going, where I’m following. We find out if this holiday is just a bigger one, across a longer pond. Tomorrow, we plan for the next tomorrow, so that we can plan for the tomorrow after that.”

Merlin smiles at him, a little bittersweet, a little empty. “You won’t go with me, to America. Tomorrow, everything may end.”

Arthur lets go of Merlin, pushes his hands off his neck, takes a few steps back. “Merlin. Nothing will end tomorrow. Things may change, they may alter. We may have to adapt to a few extra kilometers between us, an extra set of hours, but residency doesn’t last forever. Mordred won’t be a child forever. This thing between us though, these emotions and these feelings and these moments? That is forever. Don’t worry about tomorrow, until the day after.”

Merlin tries to see the blue of Arthur’s eyes in the dark, to memorize the hump in his nose, and inhale the spice of his skin. He wants to melt in his heat and never forget the coarseness of his hair, the softness of his belly. He wants his ears to always ring with Arthur’s sincerity, and wants to always taste the whisky-cinnamon-lemon of his breath, feel the salt of his tears against his cheeks. “Okay. Okay, Arthur, I can do that, I can do this. I can be here, now. And tomorrow, we face it, we deal with what happens and we…”

“We survive, Merlin. The way we always have.”

_ Forever is intimidating. It lingers, it hovers, it is ever present and always looming. It is not avoidable, is not predictable, is not containable. But forever is also a constant, a beat in a chest, a press against lips, the promise to not give up, not yet, maybe not ever. Maybe he isn’t my forever boyfriend. Maybe he isn’t my forever man. Maybe he isn’t my forever anything. _

It scares him, terrifies him, makes his stomach twist and curl and sour, and it bruises something in Merlin that makes him lean in. Makes Merlin kiss Arthur hard and fast. He kisses him and doesn't stop until his chest aches and there are lightning burst behind his eyes.

 

He decides something then, decides to take the future in his hands, to hide it behind is back.  _ Forever,  _ Merlin decides,  _ is this, tomorrow be damned.  _

He kicks the letter further under the couch. 

 


	2. Yesterday Lover

“He still loves you, you know, still misses you.” Mordred, eighteen but eyes sixty, says as he studies Merlin.

_ He loved me yesterday, the me of days gone past. He loved dark hair and smooth skin and stubble just coming in. _

“He writes you letters. Almost every day.” They are circling the garden of Emory, where Merlin graduated and where Mordred is thinking of going.

_ He loves the version of me still settling on a future. Still deciding my values. He loved the me still wild and free. _

“He could have called, Mordy.” He could not have. They both know it, have argued since ten year old Mordred found Merlin’s number in a drawer at Morgana’s. Merlin had told her she could pass it to her brother, had known she would not.

“He knew where I was heading. He was there after I opened the letter. He read it with me the next day.”

Mordred blinks in the sun, wipes sweat from his brow and curses the Georgia air. “Would you have flown to another country for a man who couldn’t even say goodbye? A man who couldn’t wait to open the letter that was forever going to change them?”

_ He loved the me that said goodbye. That wrote flowery notes in the margins of a history book. The me that still watched cartoons and drank strawberry smoothies. He loved the me that had not lived three decades, who still believed in dandelion wishes. _

He does not tell Mordred any of this. Instead, he sighs. “I didn’t want him at the airport, Mords. For reasons you cannot understand.”

But Mordred is smart. He is his mother’s fierce beauty, his nameless father’s wild spirit. The Pendragon intensity coating every move he makes. “You were afraid he would propose. You were afraid of promises neither of you were sure you could keep.”

_ He loved me yesterday, under a tin roof. He loved me when the rain, drizzled sleepy and lazy, kissing the earth. He loved me when his hands were unscarred and his eyes still innocent. _

“I have a life here, Mordred. I can’t just leave my patients.”

He could though, could leave this town behind. Could forget the brown eyes of the man he almost married, could avoid the bright grin of the man who stole his brown eyes. He has the money, had the offer, has the time.

He doesn’t have anything to go back to.

“Would you really have married Gwaine?”

“If he had asked.”

“And why couldn’t you ask?” Mordred is not looking at him, is not studying him with those crystal eyes that cut too deep. He is watching a girl, Kara. Merlin knows that look. Knows the hope and the fear. Knows that Mordred will be better than him. That he will follow his heart, wherever it ends up. He wonders if Mordred knows Kara has already been accepted back at Oxford. If they’re just using this as an excuse for a vacation.

“Because. It had to be his choice to settle for an incomplete man.”

“So he got a choice, but Arthur didn’t?”

Merlin can feel himself getting agitated, can feel the anger and frustration pooling in his gut. “He was my yesterday lover, Mordred. We couldn’t predict the future and we couldn’t change the past.”

_ He loved me yesterday and I’ll miss him tomorrow, but today is my own and I’ll cling to its presence. _

Mordred shrugs  _.  _ His eyes track Kara once more, soften as she laughs at something beyond their reach. “Maybe the future can’t be predicted, Merls. But it can be guided and influenced. You’re right. You can’t change yesterday. But tomorrow is within reach.” He hands Merlin a slip of paper, a string of numbers that mean nothing to him. “I know about your letter, Uncle. I saw it this morning. This is your chance, your opportunity. You’ve missed him for a decade. You’ve made him live without you for that long.”

He hears what Mordred isn’t saying. The promise that they will all be there for him, waiting. He knows Mordred is not going to study at Emory. Knows it the way he knew his mother had not survived the crash, the way he’d known Arthur would let him go if Merlin asked.

~~~

He drives Kara and Mordred to the Airport. Hugs them tightly, tries to memorize the moment. Mordred doesn’t want to let go, but the attendant calls for final boarding. “Call him, Merlin. Do both yourselves a favor.”

Merlin sees them onto the plane.

_ Yesterday he loved me beneath cotton sheets and tomorrow he might miss me against silk. Yesterday the world was wide and unexplored and tomorrow we’ll have mapped another corner. Yesterday I loved him, tomorrow he might hate me. Yesterday and tomorrow are out of my control. Today though, is at my feet. Today is still happening, unfolding around me. Today I can change things, today I want him. Today I remember him. Today I hurt without him. _

The phone rings on his ear, static and popping. Someone picks up, the rustle of a jacket, the click of train wheels, the bustle of a crowd preparing for their day.

A familiar voice, heavier, wearier, but so very much like the voice under a tin roof in the rain. “Hello? Who is this?”

He waits, his breath stalls, his heart pauses.

“Hello, is someone there?”

Inhale; whiskey from the bar, cinnamon from the bakery, lemon from the hand cream of the girl who just past by.

“Is this some kind of prank?”

Exhale. “Hello, Yesterday Lover.”

Another exhale, a million kilometers away, pained and relieved and hurt and hopeful. “Merlin? Is... it’s you, right?”

“I’ve missed you.”

 


	3. Tomorrow Husband

_ Tomorrow, I will give myself away. I will bind myself, heart and soul, to a man I once abandoned. Tomorrow, I give up the last of whatever false control I had. _

Merlin is back in the tin roof cottage, but there’s no rain pelting this time. It’s a little hot, but not nearly as muggy as his last decade has been. He staring at his reflection in the mirror, wondering when the faintest traces of grey began at his temples. When his eyes crinkled and hands calloused over.

He can hear Arthur puttering about in the bedroom, doing whatever it is he does with his creams and his lotions. Morgana has wanted them to spend this night apart, for tradition sake. But Arthur had fought. Vehemently and passionately. “We’ve spent enough night apart, Morgs. I won’t spend any unnecessary nights away from him.”

_ Tomorrow we relinquish our individuality. We accept an ever present and ever changing future. We change our paths, we tie them together in a way that cannot be undone. Tomorrow is a life altering change, a forever change, an extension of yesterday. Tomorrow cannot be undone. _

He knows that when Arthur emerges, he will smell softly of rosemary and tea and mint. A strange new thing that startled Merlin when he first experienced. A subtle change, but one that felt large, like the sun, to Merlin. A fundamental change in everything he’s known to be true of Arthur. He’s adjusted to it, now. But he will always miss the whiskey-cinnamon-lemon. And he will always wonder what he missed, what event or occurrence caused the shift.

He wonders how many moments he’ll have like that. How many grey hairs will he be there for? How many laugh lines will he cause? How many quiet evenings making up lies about the stars and sharing truths about their hearts?

_ Tomorrow can be delayed, but it cannot be avoided. Tomorrow comes, loud and impulsively, knocking down walls and people. Tomorrow is quiet, sneaking between feet and whispering across the floor. Tomorrow wraps its perfumed scarf around my neck, pulls me into a heated kiss, promises all the things dreamt of as a child. Tomorrow whispers cruel in my ears, tells me of the things I’ll never see, of things just out of reach. _

The shower stops, and a hand curls around his chest, damp and warm. “What are you thinking of, Little Mouse?”

Merlin sighs, leans into a bare chest. “I’ve told you lover, I’m not a mouse.”

Laughter in his ear, light and free. “Always so defensive Little Mouse. Though I suppose you’ve grown into your sweaters now.”

As is their habit, they fall into a sway that matches their hearts. “Tell me, Merls. What is happening between those ears?”

“I am thinking, lover.”

“Yes, I had figured that out. What of?”

Merlin studies a star he has no name for, wonders who Arthur imagines it belongs to. “I am thinking of Tomorrow. Of all of the tomorrows.”

Arthur doesn’t stiffen behind him, but he does grip Merlin tighter, does bury his face in Merlin’s neck. “Are you afraid of tomorrow? Reconsidering?”

_ Today is just the precipice for tomorrow. Tomorrow is in my hands, balanced on the tips of my fingers. Tomorrow is against my lips, the first burn of a hot flavor. I can alter tomorrow today. I cannot stop it, cannot prevent it, but I can change it. _

Arthur kisses his neck, bites at his ear. “Please do not leave me again, Merlin. Not here, not now.” Arthur splays his left hand in the hollow of Merlin’s neck, makes sure he can feel the metal band resting on the fourth finger.

_ Tomorrow is not frightening. I do not need to run from it. Tomorrow is an old friend, waiting to be greeted. Tomorrow is a new story, waiting to be heard. I am here, I am prepared. Tomorrow is mine to tame. I am not afraid of this tomorrow, not anymore. Tomorrow is one day, always on the horizon, always hovering ahead. _

“Tomorrow everything changes. Tomorrow I am yours and you are mine and we declare it to the world.” Merlin closes his eyes. Memorizes the flavors of the night, the smell of Arthur fresh out of the shower, the contrast of the hot evening air and the cool damp of his lover's skin, the silence of the cottage and the rhythm of the clock.

“And the tomorrow after that?”

“Can be dealt with when it comes.”

Arthur smiles against his skin, pulls him into the bedroom, and splays him against the sheets.

_ Forever ago, you were a temporary boyfriend. Yesterday you were a lover from another life. Tomorrow you and I are one. But today, in this moment, you are my everything, and I will live in this moment as long as I can. I will never let it go, will never let you go. _

 


End file.
